Someone who guides with tact, without undermining confidence and leaving you feeling talentless and shit. Someone who has put aside their own ego and is concerned solely with getting the best idea out.

A good CD 'fires creatives who insist they wrote an idea that another team has written (but no one can find the script) and insist they should collect the award with a director who has never met them because they claimed it was their idea after seeing the edit and realising it was a winner.'

But when you say the team had 'never met' the director... well, they've previously shot another ad with him. Two ads in fact!

Now that you know just how far off the mark you are there, you may begin to wonder how far off you are with the rest of what you said. I happen to know you're completely off the mark with the rest too.

This isn't the place to discuss, feel free to send me an e-mail if you want.

A good CD cares about the career development of their creatives. They make sure each team gets a variety of briefs, including some that will be good for their book, and that everyone gets a chance to work on all the clients.

A bad CD hogs all the good briefs (or always gives them to their "pet" team), bullshits to cover up the truth, and cares more about awards than effective work.

On the other hand, a good creative understands that sometimes, he or she doesn't know more than the CD.

And maybe has the wrong idea what a good CD should be.

The article itself was well written, but some creatives are more concerned about how the CD treats their (Creatives) work, careers and egos than the business and work of the department. When in fact, the CD must balance all of those as well.

A good CD fights, but does not blindly go into battle like some Creative Braveheart wannabe.

A good CD will know when he has to be a jerk and when to be kind. A good CD knows when to babysit and when to leave you to the sharks so you will learn. (I know of one CD who was nurturing but when he was away, the creatives did not know how to fend for themselves, nor push themselves.)

A good CD is prouder of his people than he is of his own work.

A good CD brings out the best in you and doesn't do your work for you. I still have a bad habit of stepping in and helping with the writing rather than getting the writer to work through it. Mostly because of time constraints.

A good CD would defend the best idea, not necessarily his own.

A good CD knows that sometimes the Creatives think they have a gem, but they don't and will have to tell them so even when they think the CD just doesn't see it. BUT the CD must be constructive in doing so.

A good CD will know when to tell the creatives when "the suits are right on this one." But will also know how to tell the suits to toe the line.

A good CD is one whose name you'll WANT to put on the credits list even if he himself chooses not to.In my old department, before I was a CD, the ECD often took out his name from the credits. But his troops (us) wanted to share the wins with him so we kept sneaking in and putting his name back.

I'm watching tv and Honda 'Impossible Dream' has just come on. That ad is from about 4 years ago.....

Then again, car manufacturers are fucked - perhaps Bailiff company's will start booking some airtime and produce 90 second, million pound films for primetime television..... Bet you hope you get that brief.

In our first real agency job, my partner and I had a tyrannical, crazed, tiny little CD who would actually be more angry if we produced good ideas than if we produced poor ones.

The better we did, the more irate he'd get - to the point that, in a review, he wouldn't say anything about the work at all, but WOULD shout at us for coming in too early, smiling too much, and wearing clothes that were too 'young' (we were 23 and 25 at the time).

The final straw came when an idea we'd had (that had made him so angry that he asked us to go home for the day) turned up in the Guardian with a huge pr story and interview with its creator... our CD.

Just after we left he disappeared off the face of the earth. Apparently he had a nervous breakdown. Being our first job, we thought this was normal behavior from a CD.

We had one who published a 15 point set of rules. One of them was how to correctly interpret the position of his door.1. Open - OK to come in.2. Slightly ajar - knock first and wait for permission to be granted. 3. Closed - on no account even think about entering/knocking.

There are no good CDs anymore. The giants have all moved on. To pastures new or the big creative department in the sky, where research isn't allowed and planners are dumb (ie without speech, we already know they're daft as hats).

A great CD respects their creative teams ideas, helps build on them, and guides them without reinventing them. He/she 'pluses' the ideas and makes good ones great, and well-rounded.

He/she also plays the politics wells - keeps the annoyances at bay, simplifies things, keeps their eye on the big picture.

They know how to make a client feel comfortable but can also do the hard sell. They know how to make everyone involved feel good about the work, and they identify and shepherd great work through the system.

i was going to be really negative and say a good cd wouldn't do xyz all day long and sit on their xyz looking at xyz weshite all day, but i'm trying to be positive this year.So ideally a good CD for me would be one that a said 'no' to things and then explained why they said no in a constructive and clear way.And from time to time i'd like one that did some inspiringly individual and creative work.

A bad CD gets insecure about your skill and attempts to overrule your work by first rejecting it without giving proper reasons, then writing his own and forcing you to send his to the account servicing executive. You know your CD is truly truly terrible when even his own work (which was presumably good in his eyes) is rejected by the clients over and over.

A bad CD goes on and on about having various angles in mind, but when you give him your own angle, he ignores you and proceeds to cookie-cut his angle into your work.

A bad CD makes you guess the specific words that he wants to use in a headline that he's thinking of. When you correctly guess the words, he says "congrats, you just made your own headline." Riiiiight...

A bad CD says that it's wrong and inappropriate to complain and moan about rejected work. But does so himself.

A bad CD spreads false rumours to newbies at work about the current colleagues, so he can 'buddy up' with the newbies.

Lastly, if you think a bad creative is one who steals original ideas and claims it his own, IMAGINE A CD DOING THAT!

Wow, I'm surprised (and a little shocked) at how many people have commented on this post. Well, I just happened to ask myself this same question and I am working on a new entry for my blog, L.A. Link, called, "What Makes A GOOD Art Director, GREAT?: Part Two where I ask, and attempt to answer, the question, "What makes a good creative director, great?" I think it has to do with many things--a lot of them have been mentioned in these posts--but I have added personally experience in the entertainment industry to the mix in my post.

I hope you post this and I hope you will visit my post after Dec. 30th, 2009, to view Part Two.

The link to Part One is here:http://losangeleslink.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-makes-good-art-director-great-part.html